Forum:Wikia's robo-welcome

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Either a junior coder at Wikia or a junior policymaker at Wikia has decided that he, or a 'bot, could do a better job of welcoming and instructing new registered Uncyclopedians than we could. To this end:

A user named QATestsStaff whom I could not block has been setting out a skeleton user page for new Uncyclopedians, and

The first person to click on the red link for the Uncyclopedian's talk page (typically to copypaste a welcome message to him) has a dippy, skeleton message written for him, with his signature on it, and logged in the history as having come from him.

The notion that an automated welcome is an improvement is mistaken. Simsilikesims, Romartus, various others, and lately ScottPat, have been welcoming new users along with me, and each of our welcomes is more informative than a robo-signed message that merely thanks the new user for editing the document they edited (but whose details make it look as though someone actually reviewed the edit).

Further, whoever at Wikia thinks forgery is a means that a hopeful end might justify, and/or that human contact is so good and warm that it ought to be automated, needs to be quickly reassigned to the No Output Division.

Further, it would be nice if someone here were advised that such a change was about to occur, if personnel are not fully occupied targeting unrevealing photos of babies in bassinettes for censoring.

My email to Sannse on this topic, in retrospect, was too angry, given that it has recurred and seems not to be the work of a rogue or a tester but deliberate. But the points remain just as valid. SpıkeѦ21:15 18-Apr-13

Wikia certainly should have gotten consensus from our community before implementing this kind of change. We already have a welcome message that we leave for new users, and although it doesn't mention the exact contribution that got the user noticed, it should be used rather than a message that (as stated above) implies that the edit has already been reviewed. Making this "faux welcome message" seem like it came from someone who merely clicked on a red link is underhanded. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN)Talk here. 21:50, April 18, 2013 (UTC)

Further to this, it seems that the Wikia 'bot also forges a cheerful Welcome message in my name when I revert vandalism from an anonymous user. (In one case this morning, it convinced Anon that I had "fallen into his trap" in thanking him sincerely for a malicious edit.) Wikia not only forges my name in the history but backdates the timestamp to the time of Anon's initial vandalism. SpıkeѦ19:16 19-Apr-13

I will email Sannse unless she is away too. Hmm...well if they wanted an autobot - it should be at least one with an agreed text. Considering how long it took us with the warning notice....--RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate)® 19:44, April 19, 2013 (UTC)

Anyone notice lately that google has been doing a lot of evil?--ShabiDOO 05:00, April 22, 2013 (UTC)

GreenReaper, regarding your wikilink, I know how to mask 'bot edits from Special:RecentChanges. But the fact that this activity clutters my report was never a concern. SpıkeѦ22:08 23-Apr-13

My concern was that by default these bot edits are hidden, so you might not have been aware of them. GreenReaper (talk) 15:21, April 24, 2013 (UTC)

Resolved?

Sannse sent email that is so complete that I told her it reminded me of how the 2001 astronauts were assured that HAL 9000 would not be a further problem and the mission could continue. Specifically:

There is something called the "Welcome system" (Who knew?!), but it should be disabled for Uncyclopedia, and Sannse has now achieved this with an edit to MediaWiki:Welcome-user--though her Change Summary was: fix, I hope

The robot-generated message should give the name of an Admin...but not claim it was written by him. Likewise the use of the QATestsStaff was inadvertent and robo-edits should be identified as coming from Wikia. So perhaps the snafu was purely organizational.

There is a ticket into QA to get this bug fixed, and we can follow its progress, although why would we when it won't apply to Uncyclopedia?

Sannsee seemed to disagree with my characterization of the robot as "forgery" and my assertion that it was a design flaw, giving a rosy description of its good intentions and even saying we might want to use it if the new-user-to-Admin ratio became problematic. For the time being I will resume greeting new Uncyclopedians and see what happens. SpıkeѦ22:04 23-Apr-13

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two. -- Sir Mhaille (talk to me)

Coincidentally, this is Daisy. Who is the bestest dog ever, and very very rarely kills anyone by disconnecting the life support system.

Just for the record (even though I know you don't need to know), the major part of the auto-welcome bug has been fixed now. It's still worth following the technical updates blog though. A lot of it doesn't apply to default-monobook wikis, but it's still the best place to get info on the bits that do.

Also, I'm sticking to "it's not a bug, it's a feature" on the signing bit. So there. -- sannse (talk) 22:19, April 29, 2013 (UTC)